Our charity

Cancer Research UK

Cancer Research UK’s vision is to bring forward the day when all cancers are cured. In the 1970s, less than a quarter of people with cancer survived. But over the last 40 years, survival has doubled – today half will survive.

Cancer Research UK’s ambition is to accelerate progress and see three-quarters of people surviving the disease within the next 20 years. Cancer Research UK’s new strategy will provide the foundations to tackle the challenges ahead.

Below are more details on the strategy, in their words, and this is exactly why it is so important to us to raise vital funds through the Great Christmas Pudding Race, every year, to support this ground-breaking research and long term ambition to beat cancer sooner.

We want survival in the UK to be among the best in the world. We’re focusing our efforts in four key areas – working to help prevent cancer, diagnose it earlier, develop new treatments and optimise current treatments by personalising them and making them even more effective. We’ll continue to support research into all types of cancer and across all age groups. And we’re keeping our focus on understanding the biology of cancer so we can use this vital knowledge to save more lives.

We’re increasing our research in key areas such as early diagnosis, and hard-to- treat cancers including lung, pancreatic, oesophageal cancers and brain tumours.

We’re developing new tests, surgery and radiotherapy techniques, and cancer drugs. We want to personalise prevention, screening and treatment and bring benefits to patients sooner.

To help accelerate progress, we’ll be investing an additional £50 million a year into new funding schemes for our researchers. These will encourage collaboration and innovation, and support research tackling some of the biggest scientific challenges in cancer research.

Smoking is the biggest preventable cause of cancer and we’ll work towards the day when no one in the UK smokes – in particular by protecting children and helping people to quit. We’ll campaign for the best cancer services in all parts of the UK, and give more people the chance to join the fight against cancer.

But we can’t achieve our mission alone. We rely on our dedicated scientists, doctors and nurses, and the generosity of our supporters across the UK. With your help, we can beat cancer sooner.